Swans on Tea

The New Yorker: Offensive Play
Scary, scary discussion of concussions and chronic brain trauma, cast in the context of the brutality of Michael Vick’s dogfighting conviction/suspension.
[L]ate last month the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research released the findings of an N.F.L.-funded phone survey of just over a thousand randomly selected retired N.F.L. players—all of [...]

A Venn diagram of the etymology of baseball team names
San Diego Padres
…
Named after the earlier Pacific Coast League team, which in turn was named for the term for Spanish missionaries in the area. Only team with an entirely non-English name.

Rhett analyzes a football collision. Momentum and Football

The Onion: NFL Scientists Postulate Theoretical Down Before First Down
Citing the extremely low level of entropy present before a normal set of football downs, scientists from the NFL’s quantum mechanics and cosmology laboratories spoke Monday of a theoretical proto-down before the first.

The Onion: Rare Centuple Play Ends Mets’ Season
This was the most outs recorded on a single play since the 2004 Montreal Expos were eradicated from the league after hitting into an ∞-play
I’m a Yankees fan, making it easier to laugh at this national-league humor.

NFL players promise brains to concussion research
I trust that there are no zombies hiding on the staff at the institution(s) doing the research.

NFL TV Maps 2009
BTW, watching football (and a little golf) in HD was great. I get NBC and FOX in HD on broadcast; CBS doesn’t come in (yet).

Start the clock
A modest proposal for improving football: the ‘time-in’
If you’ve ever noticed that football games slow to a predictable crawl at the end of each half, the time-in is the rule for you. The idea is simple: When the clock is stopped, for whatever reason, a coach could call a “time-in,” and force the [...]

Usain Bolt: The Science of Running Really Fast
Even without knowing the times, you can see that this is a special run. The first few seconds are fairly average, and as expected the acceleration trails off after around 40m, but then he just keeps going. Bolt covers 60-80m faster than 40-60m, somehow increasing his acceleration, and [...]

NY Times: For Winter Games in Vancouver, Ice Isn’t So Easy
“You can’t just go out there and make ice,” said Hans Wuthrich, in charge of the surface at the newly built curling arena, where the final step is a delicate spritz of scientifically configured water droplets strong enough to alter the course of 44 pounds [...]

Stupid sports
A wife-carrying contest is actually a lot like it sounds. Men, carrying wives, race through an obstacle course that includes sand, water and fences. The prize for winning the race is the wife’s weight in beer.

The Breakdown: Defying Death at the Gym
Neat little gymnastics demonstration that you will never catch me attempting, because it looks like an engraved invitation to a serious injury. The physics is much less strenuous, being an exercise in conservation of linear and angular momentum. If you read through the comments you’ll find [...]